Consider this. It’s 1952. You live in Boswell, British Columbia, and you’ve spent 35 years working as a mortician in the local funeral parlour.

Now it’s time to retire. But how are you going to make the most of your twilight years?

David H. Brown could have spent them trout fishing in the local lakes, but instead he decided to wander around western Canada collecting empty embalming fluid bottles from his friends in the funeral business.

Empty embalming fluid bottles? Yes. You read that right. And when he’d collected half a million of the square-shaped bottles, he used them to build himself a house. As you do.

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The end result – a bizarre crennelated retreat – is certainly impressive, not least when you consider that this kind of thing was probably enough to get you sectioned back in the 1950s.

Brown, as far as we know, managed to escape the attentions of the local nurse Ratched, and left to his own devices he built something that’s half eco-home, half macabre artistic installation.

Sharks in tanks? Earthships? Mr Brown, a true pioneer, got there long before Damien Hirst and Mike Reynolds, and for that we salute him.

The house is still a private residence, but according to that great gazetteer of stateside weirdness, RoadsideAmerica.com, it’s open to the public in the summer.

If I ever make it to BC I’ll be sure to pay a visit … as an added bonus, the world’s largest standing cuckoo clock is just down the road in Kimberley.  It features “Happy Hans,” who yodels enthusiastically every hour.

A house made from embalming fluid bottles and Bavarian timepieces that yodel: now that’s what I call perfect holiday happiness.

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Related Tags: bottle house, Architecture & Design, eco house